Task 1

In order to see the appropriate detail on each plot, we present all four of them separately. Then, at the end, we should a 2x2 combination plot that allows for easier comparision between the four plots.

Individual plots

Combintation plot

Observations based on February 2015 yellow and green taxi data:

  • The quantity of rides is much larger for yellow taxis than for green taxis. We can observe this phenomenon both in these plots and in the number of rows contained in the csv files
  • Hot spots for dropoffs appear to be roughly the same between yellow and green taxis. However, for pickups, there is a hotspot for yellow taxis (around longitude = -74.0 and latitude 40.75), where green taxis don’t appear to be making pickups. It would be interesting to know whether green taxis are prohibited from making pickups around that location
  • For both yellow and green taxis, dropoffs span a large space than pickups, suggesting that they are less concentrated. This result makes intuitive sense because the center of Manhattan has an extremely high density of people (so there are some very common pickup locations). In contrast, though there are clearly most popular dropoff locations, the total set of locations is far more diverse than we see for pickup locations.
  • NOTE: All of these observations are based on plots filtered for longitude and latitude values associated with NYC borough boundaries. This filtering excludes some of the data contained in the original CSV files, and we accept this trade-off for better visibility into our region of interest

Task 2

Observations based on yellow and green taxi data during rush hours:

  • Manhattan area seems to be dominated by yellow taxis–yellow taxis have a very high concentration of pickups in that area where green taxis hardly have any.
  • Green taxis have more pick ups in the upper and lower boroughs of NYC than yellow taxis, both during rush hours and outside of rush hours.
  • During rush hours, yellow taxis have a high density of pickups on Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn while a much higher proportion of pick ups occur at the outskirts of the NYC boroughs. The overall rush hour pickups still dominate these hours, however.
  • Green taxis’ pickups have a high density in the upper part of Brooklyn during rush hours, while their pickups in the other boroughs comparing to the yellow taxis seem to be more evenly distributed in the outskirt of the NYC boroughs between the rush hour and non rush hour periods.